Meditation or prayer has been a daily part of my life since at least my teen years. In my most fervent days, I sought to be "praying at all times," even when just walking from place to place or waiting for an elevator. I had little alarms set on my watch and planner to remind…
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James Turrell’s “Three Gems” at the DeYoung: A Portal to the Sky
I feel so blessed to work literally across the street from one of the incredible art installations by Quaker artist James Turrell. At the DeYoung Museum of Art, in the sculpture garden, is a commissioned installation created by Turrell he calls "Three Gems." Like all of his work, it is minimalist to the extreme, with…
OMG, “Re/Genesis” Show is This Weekend!
I can't believe that after months of work, we are just days away from my dance crew's show "Re/Genesis" April 12 and 13 in San Francisco. It's been an incredible journey for me, as the original instigator of this show with my piece "The Message" that I created a year and a half ago. A…
Unexpected Thanks
I have so much to be thankful for, today and everyday. As Quakers, we are reminded that “thanksgiving” is a state of mind, a way of living. Still, it helps to have a special day on the calendar to be especially and publicly assessing what we are thankful for. There is the usual list of…
What I Learned About Myself by Dying at SomARTS
This Saturday, I had the pleasure of being at the closing celebration for the "Day of the Dead" art exhibition at the wonderful SomARTS center in Soma, SF. There were a ton of excellent "Day of the Dead" themed art installations all over the place, including my friend Niloufar Talebi's very moving video installation "everybodydies." …
Blogging Less, Falling More
Yesterday I formally shut-down my other website Betterverse.org. Betterverse has been a labor of love for the past three years, so I’m of mixed emotions about wrapping it up. On the one hand, it’s been wonderful having an outlet for spotlighting all the amazing work that nonprofits, charities, companies and governments have been doing using…
Google’s Project Glass and Spiritual Augmented Reality
Today at Quaker Meeting for Worship I gave this message: I've been thinking about this new project that people at Google are working on. It's called "Project Glass." Essentially it's a pair of glasses you wear that present different information on a display in front of your face. They call it "augmented reality." So…
Thankful
About a year ago, I moved to the Bay Area from New York, with some fairly ill-defined goals — more of what Quakers call a “leading,” rather than any kind of concrete plan. I knew that I wanted to be closer to my family. I felt like it was time for some kind of big…
Digitizing Performance: Increasing Reach, Decreasing Power
Today at Quaker Meeting I was thinking about how the experience of any kind of performance is affected by the format that is received. A symphony listened to from the lawn in Central Park with thousands of other picnickers has little relationship to the same symphony heard from a video recording uploaded to YouTube. And…
When I’m Gone, Just Let Me Go: the Will to Not Live
So my family has been struggling with a series of health issues, most recently a very sick relative who is hanging on by a very thin thread and whose spouse is having difficulty deciding on what to do about it. Essentially all of his body functions have failed him and he is completely non-responsive to…